The Grumblings of a Grateful Soul

Recently, I stumbled across a tweet that really got me thinking: “To complain about God is a sin. To complain to God is a Psalm.” There is a profound lesson here. Isn’t this what so many of the psalms contain: The grateful grumblings of the God-centered soul? We grumble (lament) because life in a sin-cursed world brings with it such agony. But we are also grateful because Someone is there to listen to our grumblings, passover their sinful excesses, and fill their darkest woes with hope and meaning at the foot of His cross.

This is why “Jesus is my Boyfriend” love songs never seem to cut it for me, especially on those days when Jesus seems to be my enemy. When life is hard, we need something bigger to sing than those amorous lyrics, something with darker hues, songs that speak of the clouds and thick darkness and the inscrutable mystery that surrounds the throne and ways of our God.

Think of Jeremiah lamenting the impending dereliction of the Holy City:

“I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy; though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked. He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate; he bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver . . . .” (Lamentations 3:1–13)

What song would you recommend that Jeremiah sing at this moment? Something from Hillsong, perhaps? Or might you find a better selection in the Psalter? So many of those carry the tone of deep, heart-rending lament. Most of the time, such songs leave the psalmist better than they found him. Take Psalm 13, for example, which Spurgeon calls the howling song because of the repeated, anguished interrogative, “How long, Oh, Lord . . . ?” And yet it ends with, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:5–6). John Wesley was indeed correct:

“Sometimes a light surprises
the Christian while he sings;
it is the Lord, who rises
with healing in his wings:
when comforts are declining,
he grants the soul again
a season of clear shining,
to cheer it after rain.

Though vine nor fig tree neither
their wonted fruit should bear,
though all the field should wither,
nor flocks nor herds be there;
yet God the same abideth,
his praise shall tune my voice,
for, while in him confiding,
I cannot but rejoice.”

But while such songs do tend to tune our voices, and marvelously so, they don’t always banish the darkness or usher in the dawn of a new day with the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings.

Take Psalm 88, for example, which Alec Motyer calls one of the most moving psalms in the whole collection:

“We find a song without any note of hope, the product of a time of apparently terminal and prolonged illness, and appropriately to its mood throughout, it ends with the bleak word “darkness” [in]verse 18. The three sections of the psalm each beginning with a renewed appeal to the Lord (1–9a, 9b-12, 13–18), deal in turn with life without comfort, death without hope, and questions without answers. But prayer is still the way when all hope is gone: the sufferer in all his darkness is still the intercessor.”

In other words, no matter how dark things seem, no matter how discouraged we become, the Christian response must never be to draw back from God. We find our bearings through the darkness leaning into Him with a song on our lips. Sometimes this song will be a protest, a complaint, a lament, or even a dirge. It should bring us tremendous comfort to know that God is big enough and kind enough to absorb the often short-sighted, poorly-conceived, impatient, immature, and unrestrained emotions that such songs frequently contain. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. He knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. Not uncommonly, such compassion necessitates a gentle and sometimes quite a firm correction. We need to see the big picture, not just our earthbound, self-focused one. We need the faith and the will to see above the storm clouds to the throne of God where the Sun of Righteousness always shines. No matter how things appear, as Dr. Jonny Gibson likes to say, the moon is always round, and God is always good.

Sometimes the hardest thing in life is that we think that it should be much easier than it is. We think the really spiritual man can give thanks at all times and rejoice always with a kind of stoic indifference to the agonies going on around him. But this is not what we see in the life of Jesus, that perfect soul. Perfectly joyful. Perfectly thankful. Often Jesus’ heart was troubled, and he ought to have been. He was troubled at the way death ripped Lazarus out of Mary and Martha’s arms. Troubled, perhaps, even by the way his good plan had to cause this precious family such pain. He was troubled as well by Judas’ treachery—another one of God’s good plans. But going through it still hurt. Yet this is a life of perfect, constant joy. Even when He entered the darkness of Gethsemane and stood over the gaping pit of outer darkness, the chasm into which our sins would take Him on the morrow, our brave Savior kept the command to rejoice always and give thanks for everything to the uttermost. Isn’t this another of the timeless paradoxes of the Christian faith: sometimes the joyful soul finds itself singing the blues, and in a minor key, to boot. We rejoice with fear and trembling, and sometimes with weeping thrown in, as well.

This is why I love the psalter and spend so much time endeavoring to hide its verses in my soul. They really are songs for all seasons that form, as Calvin said, an anatomy of the Christian soul. I can’t tell you how many times these songs have found me and taken me as if by the hand back to God. No matter how dark our days become, let’s turn to God with a song on your lips, and we’ll discover together the surprising light that so often comes upon the Christian when he sings.